


The Greatest Treason

by ishafel



Series: The Backstory 'Verse [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wales, 1913.  King, emperor, bishop, baron, king : Uncertain mastery of melting armies, War, plague, and revolution, New conspiracies, broken pacts; To be master or servant within an hour, This is the course of temporal power.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greatest Treason

Grindelwald's mistress was called, improbably, Juniper Greengrass: a tall and buxom woman with hair that was not quite red and not quite blond, and creamy skin without a single freckle. She was Irish, very clever and very short-tempered, and Abraxas disliked her intensely.

The winter of '13, it snowed from November to April, and Grindelwald was abroad for most of it, in Austria and Russia and Poland, raising money for his cause. Abraxas and Juniper spent the winter in the Greengrass country house in the marches, Mr. Greengrass having died conveniently just after Juniper met Grindelwald.

She was the wealthiest of Grindelwald's coterie of English philanthropists, as well as possessing the largest and nicest bosoms, and Abraxas was his chief aide-de-camp. They were tasked with translating Grindelwald's writings from German to English, and they fought over every word as though it was magic and not philosophy.

In some ways, of course, it was magic: though Juniper was handsome as well as wealthy and Abraxas wealthy as well as well-connected, neither of them had, or even had seen, charisma of Gellert Grindelwald's variety. There was no magic in his words-- and, for Juniper and Abraxas, who were not idealistic-- very little logic at times. And yet they believed a great deal of it, and more than that they wanted to believe the rest. They wanted to be the sort of people who believed, as Grindelwald himself did, in the Greater Good, the destiny of wizardkind, a future of peace and security and happiness.

Being the sort of people they were, instead, they were deeply suspicious of one another, and each determined not to be shown up in front of Grindelwald. Had they been anyone else but his mistress and his closest friend, they might have simply gone to bed together and resolved the tension-- or at least enjoyed it.

Instead they waited, separately angry and despairing, for Grindelwald to come back to England. He came at Easter, and it was clear things had not gone well on the Continent. Grindelwald had been ill; he had lost weight, and seemed tired, and there was not so much money nor such a response as he had hoped. He was glad to see them both. He looked over their work and said lovely things about it, and seemed pleased. And then he went to bed, early and alone.

Juniper and Abraxas waited until he had gone to resume hostilities. There was a brief quarrel, by firelight, held entirely in whispers. But after that they reached a truce. They were, both of them, a little in love with him, and perhaps a little in love with one another. And they knew he loved them both.

They went, together, to his bed, and lay with him between them, Juniper naked and Abraxas in only his trousers. When he woke, they made love to him, Juniper with her body and Abraxas with his hands and mouth. And when his fine blue eyes darkened with passion, when he twisted a hand in Juniper's hair and pressed his forehead to Abraxas's collarbone and his breath came in ragged gasps, they were happy. And in this one thing, this one place that needed no words, there was no anger between them.

By May he was gone again, to America, and the book was at a publisher's in Dublin, and Juniper was in London raising money and Abraxas was in Edinburgh raising soldiers. What they had had was gone, too.

In 1918 Grindelwald surrendered on the bank of a muddy river in France, and both his mistress and his second-in-command testified against him at his trial and were granted immunity. And neither of them looked at him as they detailed his crimes, and neither of them looked at each other.


End file.
